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I’m examining email etiquette! Have you found emailing to be a blessing or a curse? It has certainly improved our ability to communicate quickly and easily, but it can become our master. We can truly become addicted and in bondage to this way of communicating. It’s a tool we need to use, for sure, but we need to use it wisely and correctly.

A few more rules of etiquette for emails, in addition to the ones I shared with you yesterday:

  • Be informal but not sloppy. Your email communication represents you and your organization, so it’s just as important to use correct spelling, grammar and punctuation as it would be for a printed communication.
  • When you have an email for a group of people, consider how much more effective it might be if the email were individually sent to each person. Now, it’s certainly not necessary to do this with every group email, but for important communications you definitely want to be read, an email addressed to me personally, for example, will carry more weight than one addressed to me and several others.
  • Using all capital letters looks as if you’re shouting, so only use it when you want to shout! Maybe there are times to shout for joy and that can be effective, but most of the time it has a negative effect. Instead, use a font color to highlight things.
  • Generally, the fewer words you use, the more effectively you will communicate. Most of us use far more words than are necessary to get our messages across, and people just start to tune us out. A good suggestion is to edit every email before you send it and eliminate unnecessary words. Less is definitely more when it comes to emails.

The Apostle Paul wrote so whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Well, as a Christ-follower that means your communication skills—which are things you do—should be done for God’s glory. I send emails every day; most of you do as well. I want even the emails I send to bring honor, not dishonor, to my Lord.